Only a week after the last episode Ruth and John are back with another discussion of all things parental and geeky. We open the show today with a special shoutout to listener Alice, and we hope she’s having a good boogie to our theme music again.

We start off with the tragic story of how John managed to throw away three cups of tea in the space of just one hour.

We give a recap of the Rhythmic gymnastics competition which Catherine took part in at the weekend, and talk about how she got on.

We have discovered that a Creme egg cafe has opened in London, and speculate what it is like. Is it a serious cafe or a PR stunt?

Following a recommendation from our friend Mark, who you can find in the Big Man in the Woods podcast, we talk about trying Wilko’s own brand construction blocks toy. Compatible with the big named brand, how does it compare price wise and quality wise? We have the lowdown for you following copious testing!

We’ve ben watching Making a Murderer on Netflix and give our thoughts on that show. We also recommend The Jinx if you like true crime series like that. This leads into a discussion of Serial, which has just started season 2. We talk about the differences between the two seasons. Ruth also recommends the Truth and Justice podcast for even more analysis of the Adnan Syed case and other miscarriages of justice.

There’s a shoutout to Elaine from the Macbites podcast who has power over Ruth’s Siri. Scary stuff!

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Happy New Year! It’s 2016 and Ruth and John are back with a bumper-sized episode for your listening pleasure!

We talk about our family Christmas, and some of the best presents we all got. David is completely in love with his Sphero BB-8, and we mention the Tickle app for programming it.

We can’t mention BB-8 without talking about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Danger – there are spoilers ahead! We talk about how we decided whether or not to take the kids to see it, and there’s a mention of the BBFC website which we recommend for researching why films have been given particular ratings.

John’s got a Google Pixel C, and gives his opinion on this tablet. We also mention the Amazon Kindle Fire as a budget tablet, particularly for kids. Ruth also gives her recommendations for the best kind of cases to use to protect your kids’ tablets.

We next move on to a couple of new kitchen gadgets that have entered our lives. Ruth has been making lots of use of her Soup Maker, and John bought her a Nutribullet for Christmas, which he is using almost as much as she is.

We bought Catherine an HP pavilion x2 laptop for Christmas, and we talk about what we think of this device. It has also given us the chance to play with Windows 10 parental controls, with which we’re actually really impressed. Ruth also mentions Curbi which is a promising parental controls app for iOS (it’s also available on Android).

We talk about our kids YouTube watching habits, and how much we like the YouTube Kids app (you can read more about this on Ruth’s blog). Unfortunately it’s not available on Windows 10. Catherine has now reached the stage where she wants to start commenting on videos she watches on YouTube, and we discuss how we handled this.

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Welcome back to another episode of Parental Geekery – the podcast for parents and geeks. This week we are celebrating being named as the latest U.K. Podcasters featured podcast and would like to welcome any new listeners who have found us recently.

We talk about Catherine’s 8th birthday, and the plans for her upcoming birthday party which is being held at a local climbing centre.

Ruth gives her opinion on the new iPhone 6s. John admits he’s seriously tempted by the Nexus 6P if only for the sake of having a fingerprint reader. We also consider whether it’s better to have buttons on the side or the back of your phone. Ruth has popped her Apple Pay cherry and shares the experience.

John has just bought himself a Xiaomi Mi Band fitness tracker. He is finding the supplied wrist band a little tight, so has ordered himself a larger strap from this website. He also considered a Misfit Shine before deciding on the Xiaomi.

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Ruth and John are back with another episode of Parental Geekery, the aspirationally-weekly podcast where we talk about whatever’s interesting us, which is generally something geeky or parenty! We start off this week talking about David’s impending surgery to repair his Hydrocele. We go through our plans for the day, what we’ve done to prepare both kids for the operation, and what Catherine will be doing that day – it’s not what we initally expected!

We start talking about our summer holiday plans, but only get as far as talking about both kids spending some time at Mad Science camp before we get distracted into a bigger conversation about girls, coding, technology and science. John talks about the new worksheets available to him as a Code Club volunteer, and how he is going to structure his after school sessions next term. He also talks about a group in the United States that has been set up to teach girls how to code, but can’t remember the name (it’s App Camp for Girls).

We talk about how Catherine is really enjoying magic at the moment. John has showed her a couple of David Copperfield videos, and we talk particularly about his flying illusion and how it’s done. Catherine is very much enjoying her Melissa and Doug Deluxe Magic Set, which we think is a much better buy than their Discovery Magic Set.

John is enjoying playing Heroes of the Storm, and David enjoys watching and “helping”. We’re both really enjoying The Good Wife on Netflix. We recommend Bloons TD 5 as a great tower defense game that’s completely family friendly, and then confess to playing Monkey City which is probably less suitable for young kids!

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Welcome back to a new episode of Parental Geekery, a podcast for geeks and parents. In this weeks show we start off talking about John’s new iMac (again). Then he tells the sorry tale of how his Drobo has died, which naturally leads us into the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch. John recommends SpinRite for resurrecting broken hard drives. Then to cap it all John’s PC died and needed a new motherboard.

In a recent episode we asked for opinions as to which new phone John should buy, as he was trying to decide between the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4. Today we can reveal that John decided on the G4, and he talks about how he is getting on with it.

We’ve had a new parenting milestone recently – David has moved out of his toddler bed and is now in a proper full sized bed.

The kids are both currently obsessed with My Little Pony, and John introduces Ruth to the concept of Bronies.

Catherine is learning to play the recorder at school. She has just about mastered Annie’s Song. She has been offered the chance to learn an instrument next year, and has been given the choice of keyboard, flute, clarinet or saxophone.

As a Nintendo Blogger Family we’ve been sent a copy of Yoshi’s Woolly World and we talk about our first impressions of that game, and the knitted amiibo we got with it.

We finally get around to answering a question from our listener Louise who emailed to ask where she could find the old episodes of Just Relax It’ll Happen.

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Welcome back to another episode of Parental Geekery, the podcast where John and Ruth talk all things parenting and geeky. We start off with some geek news – John is getting a new iMac, which he is very excited about. Ruth is making a play for his old one, due to wanting to work with iMovie.

In culinary news, John made stew, which both kids turned their noses up, but the adults in the family thought was delicious. It’s the only time a My Daddy Cooks recipe has let us down. Have any of you got a great stew recipe? Or a sausage casserole one? We’d love to hear from you.

We then go on to talk about our half term from hell. It started off with David being sick. And then got worse when he had an accident in Waitrose. Ruth talks about how hard it is to be a working Mum sometimes when things like that happen. Then we lost our elderly Devon Rex cat, Elliott, and talk about how the kids handled that. And finally we had to deal with water coming through the ceiling of David’s bedroom.

After all that doom and gloom, we cheer up a little talking about some new technology we’re trying out – the WeMo from Belkin. Ruth’s been sent this to review for her blog. And in our capacity of Nintendo Blogger Family we’ve been sent a copy of Splatoon for the Wii-U and give our first impressions of that.

John’s been playing Cities Skylines (with some help from David), and he talks about that and how it compares to Sim City.

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In this episode of Parental Geekery Ruth and John, who are both parents and geeks, bring you the latest events in their world. We open with the news that this podcast is not available on Spotify but it will be in the future, thanks to their announcement this week that they will be making podcasts available on their platform.

We then talk about John’s Mum having broken her hip (or is it her leg?). As she’s going to be in hospital for a while we’ve been trying to sort out her Internet access, and we talk about setting her up with Ruth’s MiFi, and then having to tell her off for using too much data! She’s now got John’s spare phone with a SIM that has unlimited data (thanks to Three), which we hope will allow her to watch Netflix and iPlayer from her hospital bed. She’s also bought herself an HP Stream laptop based on our recommendation, and John talks about getting that set up for her.

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Well, we’re back after taking a couple of weeks away from podcasting for our Easter break, and today’s show is unashamedly dedicated to our Disneyland Paris holiday that we took in that time.

We talk about the booking process, and why we made the choices that we did in terms of transportation and accomodation. We stayed at the Davy Crockett Ranch which, although technically a Disney hotel, is about 15 minutes drive away from the parks. This meant that we had to drive all the way. We cover the practicalities of a long drive with our kids, and also what we thought of breaking the journey with an overnight stay at the Premier Inn in Dover.

Then we move onto the serious business of the Disneyland Paris experience. From Dreams, the firework and light show spectacular to the parades to the rides we talk about all the things we got up to.

As far as meals are concerned we loved the character interactions at Cafe Mickey, the Auberge de Cendillon and Inventions. We also talk about the meal plans offered by Disney and whether they’re a good buy or not.

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It’s time for another episode of Parental Geekery, where husband and wife team John and Ruth chat about whatever geeky parental things are on their mind, which appears to start with soap and water this week.

John’s been away for a long weekend in Holland, staying in Port Zelande Center Parcs and watching his favourite band, Marillion. Meanwhile Ruth stayed at home with the kids, and wonders if John will ever forgive them for going to see Home without him. She gives a quick review for any parents considering taking kids to see it.

Catherine spent a night away from home on a school residential trip to a nearby outdoor educational centre. She had a great time. Ruth and John talk about her concerns before going, which mostly centred around the fact that she was expected to make her own bed, including putting the duvet into the duvet cover. Ruth was relieved to find a video showing a simple way to put a duvet cover on.

We’ve had listener feedback from Rob this week, who left feedback on the last show talking about the Apple Watch and the USB port in the new MacBook.

And while we’re talking about pretty laptops, we’ve just discovered the new Hewlett Packard Stream, which everyone in the family seems to want! Whilst Ruth works with Hewlett Packard for her blog that only covers printers, and we have no vested interest in talking about this laptop. Whilst we’re talking about that we briefly mention an upcoming trip to London for a Hewlett Packard press event to learn more about their printers.

We talk about the recent news that Nintendo are going into the mobile gaming market.

We finish off talking about John’s new photography challenge – he’s doing a project 365 this year. He’s posting his photos on BlipFoto, but is also using a new withknown.com blog to keep copies of all his pictures. We talk about what withknown.com is, and why it’s useful.

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Here we go with another topic-packed episode of Parental Geekery, the podcast for geeky parents. Ruth and John start off by discussing the recent Apple accouncement. John describes his very “science fiction” way that he listened this time, and also expresses his joy at finally being able to sit and watch some of the announcement with Catherine. We talk about the Apple TV price drop, the new medical research apps, the new MacBook, and finally cover the iWatch – is it a hit or a miss in our geek family?

We talk about the Now TV service from Sky. UK Game of Thrones viewers rejoice – this is now the cheapest way you can watch the new season legally!

We also talk about our experience of watching The Wolf of Wall Street with Ruth’s aging father in the room. Perhaps not to be advised!

We’ve had some great listener feedback on last week’s topic of suitable board games for kids. Richard and Neil both added posts in our Google+ community, and Trudy left a comment on the show notes on the web site. Incidentally Ruth had to upgrade the WordPress theme we’re running in order to read that! Richard reminded Ruth that she should be watching more Tabletop on YouTube, and Neil pointed us in the direction of rpgKids, a simplified Dungeons & Dragons type game that the author developed for his four year old daughter.

Finally we talk about the need to take care with medicines, and John’s fear that he had overdosed David on paracetamol. He’s done the research though, and can tell you all about what levels are poisonous, and what symptoms to look for!

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Parental Geekery is a podcast produced by Ruth & John Arnold, who are both geeks and parents. We live in Cheshire in the UK with our two children. In our show we talk about parenting and geekery. [Read more...]

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